Psychic Lobster Football Pick...

I’m not really a gambler. I’ve been in two casinos and never placed a bet. One was when Em was born, and Dad treated me to the buffet at the riverboat across from the hospital. The other time was a business trip, and the company pitching me put me up in a riverboat hotel/casino.

I don’t even understand 99% of this stuff.

And I don’t really have a rooting interest in this game since the Chiefs aren’t in it. Still, I’ll watch. I loves me some football, and since I don’t have cable, I don’t get another fix until August.



If it weren’t for football and the occasional movie on DVD, I could actually live without TV altogether. I’m not Amish, though you’d think it from the looks you get from people if you don’t have cable or a dish.

So here’s how I pick who to root for:

I root for an AFC team, so I should want an AFC team to win. Except the conferences are totally arbitrary these days, such that the Seattle Seahawks, who used to be in the AFC West are now in the NFC West. Which includes the Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers, by the way, teams that are West of just about nothing.

Peyton Manning is a class act, and might even be the best QB playing today. But a great quarter back doesn’t win games without, for instance, a great kicker and a great center and a great linebacker and so on. If great quarterbacks actually did all the work, Dan Marino wouldn’t have retired without a Super Bowl ring.

But for me there’s another criteria: I hate when teams move. In my mind, there is a gulag for the Art Modells of this world. And Art couldn’t have sold Cleveland out to the taxpayers of Baltimore and Maryland without the Colts having pulled that stupid Mayflower stunt to go to Indianapolis.

I have a cure for this, by the way: a federal law banning public ownership and finance of sports stadiums. The NFL is a multi-billion dollar business and can build their own damn arenas. A guy with a loyal fan base is not going to turn a huge stadium into a white elephant and move to another town, having to build another stadium, for kicks. And it’s immoral to take tax dollars from hardworking families who can’t even afford tickets to subsidize a sport with a $275,000 minimum wage.

Anyway, I just don’t root for teams that have moved for money. That’s why any day the Raiders lose is a good day: Al Davis has done it twice.

So I’ll be rooting for Chicago, I guess. I like Peyton and all, but the Bears have been in Chicago since before the Cardinals were in Chicago. Remember that? Before they were in St. Louis, then Phoenix?

So what score do I predict? I think Peyton and his crew will take the Bears to school. Indie 29, Chi 17.